AUTHOR=Schaefer Andreas T., Margrie Troy W.

TITLE=Psychophysical properties of odor processing can be quantitatively described by relative action potential latency patterns in mitral and tufted cells

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 6 - 2012

YEAR=2012

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2012.00030

DOI=10.3389/fnsys.2012.00030

ISSN=1662-5137

ABSTRACT=Electrophysiological and population imaging data in rodents show that olfactory bulb
(OB) activity is profoundly modulated by the odour sampling process while behavioral
experiments indicate that odour discrimination can occur within a single sniff. This
paper addresses the question of whether action potential (AP) latencies occurring across
the mitral and tufted cell (M/TC) population within an individual sampling cycle could
account for the psychophysical properties of odour processing. To determine this we
created an OB model (50 000 M/TCs) exhibiting hallmarks of published in vivo
properties and used a template-matching algorithm to assess stimulus separation. Such
an AP latency-based scheme showed high reproducibility and sensitivity such that odour
stimuli could be reliably separated independent of concentration. As in behavioral
experiments we found that very dissimilar odours (“A vs B”) were accurately and
rapidly discerned while very similar odours (binary mixtures, 0.4A/0.6B vs 0.6A/0.4B)
required up to 90 ms longer. As in lesion studies we find that AP latency-based
representation is rather insensitive to disruption of large regions of the OB. The AP
latency-based scheme described here therefore captures both temporal and
psychophysical properties of olfactory processing and suggests that the onset patterns of
M/TC activity in the OB represent stimulus specific features of olfactory stimuli.